


A World That's Still Here

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Car Sex, M/M, Supernatural AU: Croatoan/End'verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 15:02:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a (not overly successful) hunt, Castiel may or may not be infected with Croatoan. It's snowing too hard to drive, so they may as well just wait it out parked on the side of the road. (Goes AU at the end of season 5, into something like, but not quite, the End!verse.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A World That's Still Here

This is what happened: Dean turned up to Stull Cemetery, Lawrence, and tried to sweet talk Michael and Lucifer out of beating the shit out of each other. He didn't succeed, but he did manage to get them to beat the crap out of him, too. It was Sam who saved the day and broke through with enough willpower to open up a door to hell and throw himself in, along with destiny's angels. 

Meanwhile, Castiel found an all-night liquor store and woke up hours later, surprised and hungover, to a world that was still there. 

*

“Cas, get in!” Dean shouts, leaning across to push the passenger side door open. He can see Castiel in the rear window, running toward the car, three Croatoan infectees on his tail. He's a fast runner, Castiel – even weighed down with his coat and jacket – but so are the Croates. Even though he's still got a couple of feet on them, he looks like he's losing steam. He makes one last dive for the car as the closest Croate catches up, making a grab for his sleeve. 

“--The fuck off him!” Dean yells, grabbing Castiel by the other arm and hauling him bodily into the impala. Castiel falls with an exhausted _thump_ into the seat, gasping air into his lungs and staring wildly at Dean. 

“Drive,” he says, around ragged breaths. Dean doesn't need to be told twice, and kicks the car into gear. With a loud screech, they race down the high street out of town, air whipping through the windows and drying their shirts, damp with sweat, to their skin. 

“You okay?” Dean asks, glancing at Castiel. He can slow the car a little now, as they pass the town's border with no sign of anyone on their tail. He still soars down the road at the speed limit and a half, but he lets the impala glide slower until the scenery is no longer just an indistinguishable blur out the side window. Beside him, Castiel looks a bit pale, but his face is unreadable and his breathing has returned to normal. Dean can see his nostrils flaring slightly as he forces himself to breath even. 

“They're fast,” is Castiel's only reply. “I did not expect them to be quite so fast.”

“You mean you didn't think they'd keep up with _you_?” Dean replies with a grin. He likes this bit, where the thrill of panic in his veins slows to a gently thrumming buzz. “Last time I let you scout the area without me, man. The goddamn engine can keep herself running.”

Castiel looks like he can't decide whether to look pleased or affronted. “I am capable of looking after myself,” he says haughtily, and that's when Dean sees the trickle of red peeking out from under the sleeve of Castiel's overcoat. 

“Hey, what's that?” he snaps, reaching out and grabbing Castiel's arm with one hand, pulling it towards him, pulling back the beige material. “Cas, you're bleeding!”

Castiel glances down at his wrist with dull surprise and pulls his hand back, away from Dean. He runs a finger over the trail of blood, looks at it intently. “Must have happened when he caught me,” he says thoughtfully. “It is only a shallow cut, Dean.”

“Yeah,” Dean says angrily. “A shallow cut from a fucking Croate. Fuck.” He looks back behind them, and seeing the way is still clear, pulls over to the side of the road. Instead of parking, he drives a small way into the undergrowth and stops behind a tall hedge that marks some sort of border in the sparse land their driving through and keeping them out of view from anyone driving past on the road. (Anyone who's not looking, that is.)

Once he's pushed the gear into park, he pops his seat-belt and leans across to Castiel, trying to get a good look at his arm. He swears again – it's getting dark outside, too dark to see – and turns the ceiling light on with one hand. 

“Are you okay, Dean?” Castiel asks, tilting his head at his friend's panicked attentions. 

“Get your jacket off,” Dean just says, “And your shirt.” Castiel does as he says, pulling his coat and jacket off and pushing them to the floor at his feet before patiently popping each button on his shirt. His hand that is marked with blood leaves a few red streaks on the white fabric. “Croates, Cas, I thought you'd dealt with them before?”

Castiel pulls his shirt off his arms so that he's wearing only the white under-shirt, and nods. “That time with Sam and Bobby,” he says. “Not before then. They are... a relatively new development.”

Dean tuts under his breath, a short hissing sound, and carefully inspects the scrape on Castiel's arm, careful not to touch any of the blood. “It gets in your veins, Cas. In your blood. You become one of them.”

Castiel's eyes widen slightly, not so much in shock as interest. “I see.”

“Do you?” Dean snaps, raising his voice a little higher than he meant to. “Then why the fuck aren't you freaking out?” Castiel leans back a little at the harshness of Dean's voice, pulling his arm away from his grip and hardening his gaze. 

“I do not believe there was any blood to blood contact, Dean.”

“Are you sure?” Dean levels his gaze with Castiel, lowering his voice to a warning. The angel takes a deep breath, controlled like before, and then averts his eye contact. A shadow flicks across his face. 

“No.”

Dean slams his fist on the dashboard. “For fuck's sake!”

There's silence in the car for a long moment as Dean stares out the front window, trying to calm himself, and Castiel watches him carefully. Waiting. In the cold air outside, snow is just starting to fall, dusting the ground and the wind-shield with an icy frost. As the minutes pass, tense and silent, the snow starts to fall heavier and heavier until, in hardly five minutes, it's coming down in thick sheets. 

“I can't drive in this,” Dean says flatly, piercing the quiet. Castiel shakes his head in agreement, opens his mouth as if to speak, then shuts it again. “You tired?”

“Yes,” Castiel replies, honestly. His voice wavers on the word, reaching for a full sentence but missing. “Dean...”

“You can climb in the back and get some shut eye,” Dean says, ignoring him. Reaching over Castiel, he opens the glove box and pulls out a nine millimetre, dropping it on the seat next to him. Castiel watches him, eyes narrowed, but climbs over to the back anyway. 

“I'm fairly certain,” he says, hesitantly, not stretching out on the seat, “that I was not infected.”

“The blankets up behind you, Cas,” Dean says gruffly. “Just go to sleep. I'll wake you in a few hours.”

Castiel is begrudgingly exhausted – it's been a long day, driving for hours before stumbling on the Croate town. Doing footwork with Dean that he's still not used to and mostly stays silent for. Running. Running for his life, for one of the only times in his long, long existence. But still, he doesn't think he can sleep. He lies down stiffly anyway, pulling the rug that they keep in the car for nights when there’s no hotel over his shoulders. The car descends into sharp silence again. 

“How long?” Castiel asks after a while, his voice sounding a little groggy to his own ears – he must be closer to unconsciousness than he thought. 

Dean snorts in the front seat. “You said you're fine,” he says, at smiles at Castiel in the rear-view. “Don't back down on that now.” That smile is comforting, Castiel thinks. He looks hard at his arm in the dim car, wishing hard that he wasn't cut off. Time was, he could spread every cell in his blood into atoms and pull the disease to pieces with his mind. Time was, he could know for sure, be healed in milliseconds. Time was, he didn't have to rely on _I don't think so_ and _It's just a scratch_. 

Time was. 

*

Dean doesn't take his eyes off Castiel's reclined figure as the minutes, then hours, slowly drag past. He doesn't drop the gun from his hand, either. _Can I do it?_ he thinks to himself, listening in the quiet for the quiet sounds of Castiel's sleep – he doesn't so much snore, Cas, as make soft, almost pained noises in the back of his throat regular as clockwork while he sleeps. Dean noticed it the first night Castiel actually slept the night through in their shared motel room. It nearly woke Dean up, thinking the other man was having a nightmare, but a glance at Castiel's slack, serene face put that thought out of his mind.

Right now, he has to listen hard to hear those little noises, as the wind outside still beats harshly against the metal of the car, whipping the snow through the air so that it builds up, thickest at the base of Dean's windscreen. 

_Can I do it, if I have to?_

The worst thing is Dean is worried that he can. If Castiel turns within the next few hours, Dean thinks that maybe, probably, he won't hesitate to shoot his only friend right through the skull. He fiddles mindlessly with the gun in his hand, puts his feet up on the leather of his seat and drops his head back to rest against the cool glass of the driver's side window, still looking down at Castiel. He imagines his brains splattered across the rear window, and frowns. 

He can picture it quite clearly. 

But it's not going to matter, he tells himself, whether he can do this or not, because Castiel is going to be fine. He's probably freaking out over nothing – who's to say Castiel can even catch the disease, what with still being, what? About twenty five percent angel? But still, it's wrong. It's wrong that Dean thinks that worst come to worst, he'll be able to do this pretty easy. Hell, he'd been on the verge of splattering Castiel's blood over _something_ the day after they lost Sam to the Pit. Maybe with a gun, maybe just with his fist – God, he'd wanted to hit Cas. Hit him again, and again and again. Watch the blood splatter from the side of his mouth until they were both bruised and broken and Castiel was half as fucked up as Dean himself. 

_“Why weren't you there?”_ he remembers yelling, spitting into Castiel's face, his hands shaking at his side, twitching with the desire to lash out. Castiel had just looked at him, eyes dull with hangover and apologised. Apologised two, three times, repeating that one word until the anger dissolved from Dean and he'd crashed, fallen to the floor and buried his face in his hands. 

( _Sorry. I'm sorry. Dean, look at me. Dean, I'm sorry._ )

Dean breaths through his nose, forcing the memories down. He's forgiven Castiel, he tells himself. Forgave him weeks ago, because that's what you do when family fucks up, and Cas and Bobby are the only family he has left. But forgiving doesn't mean forgetting, and it doesn't mean Dean doesn't doubt Castiel sometimes – doubt his ability to come through when he needs him. And it doesn't mean he doesn't still hate him a little bit, because maybe if Castiel had shown up at Stull Cemetery and stayed by Dean's side, maybe Sam would still be sitting in the car with them. 

Then again, maybe not. 

Dean glances at the clock. It's been three and a half hours since he saw the blood trickling down Castiel's arm – more than enough time for the disease to incubate, and Castiel is still making those sleepy little sounds in the back of his throat. Dean drops the gun onto the seat next to him, and rubs a cold hand down his face, trying to stop premature relief washing through him, but it does, and the image of Castiel, dead and blood splattered in the back seat at Dean's own hand fades from his mind. 

“He's gonna be fine,” Dean mutters to himself, aloud – he needs to hear the words, even from his own tongue to assure himself they're real. All of a sudden, nausea washes over him, and he feels sick with his own thoughts. Suddenly, Castiel's sleeping form in the back seat seems too still, too lifeless, and Dean half-panics, pushing himself over to shake at his friend's shoulder. “Hey, Cas, wake up.”

Castiel's eyes blink open immediately, as if he was only half gone anyway, and he locks onto Dean's face, brows drawn together in confusion as he orients himself. 

“How's your scratch?” Dean asks, not waiting for an answer and grabbing Castiel's hand, pulling it towards him and inspecting his bare arm with squinted eyes in the darkness. There's only a tiny discoloured line to show of the wound ever having existed. “All healed up,” Dean says, impressed. “Looks like we're in the clear.”

Relief washes over Castiel's face, and he matches Dean's grin – which is weak and forced. Then Castiel's face becomes serious again, and he props himself up in his other elbow. “I'm sorry, Dean.”

Dean shakes his head. “Nothing to be sorry for, man. Been a tense night, is all.”

“I'm sorry for alarming you,” Castiel insists, and looks down at the leather seat. “And I'm sorry for...”

“For what?”

“Just – we should be more careful,” Castiel says, but Dean feels suspicion rise up like bile in his throat. Dean narrows his eyes, but Castiel holds his gaze steady for a long moment, before looking away calmly. Sighing, Dean rubs his eyes tiredly with the heel of his hand. 

A small puff of condensation bursts into the air with Dean's heavy sigh, and as if a switch has been clicked he feels the cold all the way down to his bones. “Goddamnit,” he mutters. “Can't even get back on the road.” 

Castiel is quiet for a moment, watching Dean intently, and then says, “The snow is easing, and will melt when the sun has risen.” 

“Hours away, Cas,” Dean replies. “Just want to get into a warm, slightly seedy bed and go to sleep.”

“We can switch places if you'd like,” Castiel says, but his words slur toward the end of the sentence, and when Dean glances at him it's perfectly clear that the angel is already slipping back into sleep. Dean can't blame him, so he just sighs and condemns himself to either a dull, cold all nighter, or...

“...Alright, budge up,” he says, prodding Castiel sharply with his finger before stepping out of the car and walking around to the back seat on the opposite side, where he hauls the door open against the snow and pushes Castiel's feet over. “It's freezing and you're exhausted and I'm exhausted. Time to make do.”

It's too tender, really, crawling awkwardly into the back seat behind Castiel and wrapping one arm around his waist. Too tender, the two of them shuffling the blanket up and over and twisting and untwisting it until it kind of covers both of them, leaving only the tops of their feet sticking out of the bottom. Too tender, when only short minutes ago Dean had been thinking about splattering this whole area with Castiel's blood.

It takes a few moments – Dean's arm holding Castiel back from the edge of the seat being the only thing keeping him from slipping off – but after those moments, Dean relaxes against the chair, and Castiel against Dean, and it gets better. 

“How's that?” Dean mutters, closing his eyes, his face nearly buried in Castiel's dark mess of hair. 

“Acceptable. A little claustrophobic,” Castiel replies thoughtfully. “Not in a bad way.”

“The word you're looking for is 'cosy', Cas.”

“I wouldn't go that far.”

Dean thinks that this tender, close, slightly too suffocating feeling might be what he needs, right now. Already, with Castiel warm and breathing against his chest, he can feel the tension in his shoulders start to, if not drain away, at least lessen. His breathing starts to even out and bristles Castiel's hair on every outward puff. The angel shifts, twisting his head away a little, but when Dean asks him whether it's okay, whether he's okay with this, he just makes a rough sound of assent in the back of his throat. 

It's not cold, any more. It's not comfortable, not really – not with the way this back seat isn't really made for one full grown man to lie down in, let alone two – but it's not discomforting, and almost immediately Castiel is asleep again. Dean only has a few minutes to listen to those tiny little breathy noises coming from his lips (which don't sound quite so pained up this close) before he too is drifting off, eyelids closing, lashes catching in the coarse strands of his friend's hair. 

*

Snow stacks up as the night presses onwards, and although it is so insubstantial that the first glimmers of morning light start to melt it away, when Dean opens his eyes to the grey sunlight it is still piled right up high against the frame of the impala. Small droplets of icy water trickle their way down the glass as it starts to melt, but it's a slow thing. Dean just squeezes his eyes shut again and makes a small sound of annoyance against Castiel's hair. 

Castiel moves slightly, as if he might lean away from Dean and slip off the edge of the car-seat, so Dean tightens his grip around the angel's waist and hugs him close. He realises he must have been doing so unconsciously for the past several hours, every time Castiel shifted too close to the edge. The thought stirs something in him – a warm, suppressed instinct. Something close to the big brother instinct of protecting and safeguard, but distinct enough that it doesn't stir painful memories of Sam: At least not until he stops to think about it. 

Which he deliberately doesn't, just clenches his fist around the hem of Castiel's under-shirt and pulls him closer. Castiel makes a sound, deep in his throat, different from the sounds he usually makes while asleep: Something warmer, pushed further down inside him, barely breaking the surface. 

Dean wonders, the thought popping into his mind out of the cold air, if Castiel has ever been this close, physically, to another person, ever. Without thinking about it, Dean loosens his grip on Castiel's top, slides his hand across his friend's stomach and slowly creeps his fingertips over the bare skin of his abdomen, listening for any other noises flitting their way from Castiel's lips. 

They come, rumbling their way from deep, deep inside his chest. Dean's fingers track their way over Castiel's smooth skin, rubbing soft circles along the point where his hipbone juts out above his slightly ill-fitting slacks. The angel moans again, and Dean matches the sound with his own, feeling himself grow hard inside his jeans and wondering what the fuck it is he is doing right now. 

_As long as Cas doesn't wake up_ , he thinks, _I can have this_. He thinks that, and hates himself a little, burying his face into Castiel's neck so that he can _feel_ the blood pumping through the other man's veins. Maybe this is what he wanted – not to splatter Castiel's blood everywhere, but to make it rush, hot and fast. Make him human. 

His hand slips lower, just daring to graze under the waistband of Castiel's trousers, to feel the warm skin there, the slight coarse fuzz of navel-to-pubic hair. He presses his own hips harder against Castiel's backside, pushing his confined erection against him, seeking friction. Castiel lets out a breathy sigh in his sleep and, daringly, Dean moves his hand. He slides it down over the fabric of Castiel's pants and presses it to his crotch, finding a hardness to match his own. He squeezes, gently – oh so lightly – his brain rushing with half panicked, half aroused, half formed ideas. ( _Can I make Castiel come without waking him up? Can I get that belt undone? Want to come all over his back, want so much, want skin, want want want_...)

Then Castiel grips Dean's wrist with his own hand, and guides it in a hard, sure stroke up and down his own length. “Don't stop now,” Castiel says in that rough, gravelly voice – and his words carry more than a little bit of warning. Dean does stop. For a moment he feels like everything stops – he stops breathing, his heart stops pumping. Then, in a rush, his heart starts to race, pounding in his chest, and his breath sounds ragged to his own ears. Castiel's fingers tighten around Dean's wrist, and, his hand now trembling a little because this all suddenly became too real, Dean strokes Castiel deliberately with one hand, the other still holding him tight against his own chest. 

Castiel groans again, thick and long. “Dean,” he says. “Why?”

“I just--” Dean can't think of a good answer. “I need--”

_I need to find a way to stop it from hurting – to stop myself hating you – to stop blaming you for Sam – and because I can't love you like family, I can only love you like this –_

He doesn't finish his sentence, and Castiel doesn't prompt him to. “I like this,” he says instead, bucking against Dean's hand. Dean snorts at the statement, pressing the heel of his hand harder against Castiel's erection, then sliding his other hand down to fumble with the other man's belt buckle. 

There's not much room in the car, the confined space making it difficult to undress, to move around, to do anything other than slide pants open and push them down to thighs and then grip each other and rut against each other while trying very hard not to fall off the seat. So that's what they do. 

Dean pushes Castiel's slacks and underwear down over his hips so that they catch about mid thigh, and finally, finally wraps his fingers around hot, hard flesh. Castiel lets out a sound that's damn close to a whine, surprised and desperate, and sort of flutters his own fingers over Dean's as if not sure whether he wants to guide him or encourage him or just touch him, make sure he keeps going. 

“Oh,” Castiel says as Dean squeezes harder, rubs his thumb at the sensitive spot just under the head of his cock. “ _Oh_.”

“You like that?” Dean murmurs, grinding his own hard-on into the now bare cleft of Castiel's ass, leaving a sticky smear of pre-come at the dip where the small of his back meets his bottom. 

“I believe – _ah!_ – I have already asserted that I do,” Castiel gasps. 

The air in the car is heating up, fogging the frosted windows from within. Dean can't feel any chill in the air inside the car now, even with his trousers pushed down and the blanket kicked onto the floor. He squeezes his free hand between their bodies, pushing Castiel's under-shirt up so that it is rucked up around his armpits, and inclines his neck to kiss at the now sweat damp skin of his neck, his other hand mapping the curve of his spine. He watches his own cock slide slickly up and down that space between his ass cheeks, and lets out a low moan at the sight. 

“ _God_ Cas,” Dean says, flicking his wrist faster around Castiel's cock, shortening and tightening his strokes until Castiel is tensing up helplessly against him, his cock red and leaking. “Shit,” he mutters, watching Castiel's pre-come smear over his own hand and the shaft of the other man's cock. “You're so fucking-- Can you come for me, Cas? C'mon.”

Castiel makes that noise deep in his chest again, trailing off into a low, needy whine and cants his hips in a stilted, erratic way, the rest of his body trembling slightly – but can't seem to go over that edge. Dean feels something spark – or break – in his chest, and with a growl he tears his hand away from Castiel, ignoring the pleading sound that escapes the man's lips, and grabs him around his waist, manoeuvring them so that Castiel is on his stomach on the leather seats, his cock trapped between his abdomen and the seat, and Dean is perched above him, legs caging his thighs. He grabs Castiel's hands, which are flat on either side of his chest, trying to push himself up to get room, leverage. He holds Castiel's wrists tight, and move them up above his head so that they are braced against the door handle, which Castiel grips tight to, letting Dean move him at his whim. 

Dean holds him there with one hand – even though he's quite sure he won't move – and uses his other hand took snake under Castiel's body and push his hips up so that his ass is in the air and his face still pressed down into the leather, spine curving sharply. He wraps his hands around Castiel's cock again, and jerks him hard and fast, moulding his own body to Castiel's own, mouthing at the curve of his neck. Castiel lets out a stream of words that just dissolve into mindless begging, as if he isn't even really sure what he's asking for. _He isn't_ , Dean thinks. The thrill courses through him, the knowledge that Castiel has never broken past this peak before, never even come close, and he bites down hard on the writhing man's neck to stop some sort of incomprehensible, embarrassing sound escaping. 

Castiel goes immediately still, immediately silent, his litany of babbling sounds choking off abruptly. Then he groans, long and low, rumbling deep in his chest and it sounds almost as if the engine of the car were coming to life. Dean feels Castiel come all over his fingers, all over the black leather of the car seat, and for a moment that seems to stretch on indefinitely, it seems like Castiel just doesn't stop coming. Then he goes slack. 

Bonelessly, he collapses against the seat, his fingers loosening their grip on the door. Dean pulls back, sitting up and straddling his thighs again, his cock still tucked in the nook of Castiel's ass. With a few deliberate thrusts he finishes, splattering Castiel's back with semen, his thighs trembling, spread over Castiel's. 

“That was...” Castiel mutters after a few quiet moments in which Dean just stares at his own come marking the falling angel. “I did not expect it to be...”

“You okay?” Dean says, suddenly feeling guilt and anxiety well up inside him. Castiel didn't ask for this. Maybe just went along with it do please him. Dean shudders at the thought. 

But Castiel says, “Yes,” and sounds like he means it, then twists his head to look at Dean. “Are you?”

Castiel's gaze is piercing, so Dean doesn't reply, just looks down again and for a moment fancies again that Castiel is marked not with a smear of come, but a spray of blood. Dean rubs his thumb through the substance, smearing it into Castiel's skin till it's sticky but, for all intents and purposes, gone. 

The snow has melted almost completely outside, so Dean pulls his pants back up, buckling the belt, and climbs into the driver's seat, starting the engine and letting her warm up, dissolve away the last traces of the stacked snow. Castiel doesn't move in the back, doesn't even adjust his clothes. He just lies there, looking fucked out and half naked, watching Dean with curious, half lidded eyes.

In the front seat of the car, turning to look over the dewy, ice glittered grass, Dean manages to transform a little of his resentment into something else.


End file.
